NO CONNECTION: Robinson Cano and Curtis Granderson (pictured) came up empty last night as the Yankees struck out 11 times in their 13-inning loss to the Orioles. Photo: Charles Wenzelberg/New York Post

“Sometimes,” Buck Showalter said, “the baseball gods let you up off the deck if you stay true to the game. And so far, so good.”

So far, this has gone from being one of the most entertaining pennant races in recent Yankee memory to one of the most astonishingly close baseball match-ups you could ever conceive of, the Yankees and Orioles thisclose, Thrilla-in-Manila close. You get the feeling this could go on for months if they’d let it. You get the feeling nobody would mind.

How close? This close: over the last 31 days of the season, the Yankees were never ahead by more than 1 ½ games except for the very last day. Over the course of this series, 43 innings, 42 of them have ended with the teams either tied or separated by a run. It is mind-boggling. Since Sept. 1, the Yankees and the Orioles have gone to bed on 12 different occasions, regular season and postseason, even with each other.

This is No. 12.

This is the climax to one of greatest two-team races you will ever see. This is Affirmed and Alydar in 1978, a metaphor the Yankees wouldn’t mind continuing since close as Alydar came all across that spring, he never could run down Affirmed. This is one of those Olympic swimming races that somehow ends with one racer touching a wall one-one-hundredth of a second sooner than the other guy.

“We’ve been sparring with each other for so long,” Alex Rodriguez said when this 2-1, 13-inning masterpiece of tension, tenacity and emotional torture was over. “I guess this just feels right.”

It does feel right. It may not seem possible, given where the two teams started the season, given the way the Orioles have kept tempting fate, kept winning one-run games, kept winning in extra innings. It may not seem real that the Orioles, 14 straight losing seasons entering this one, could possibly be in the same area code as the Yankees – 17 playoff berths in the last 18 years – let alone be bunched as tightly as they are.

And yet here they are.

“Here we are,” Showalter said.

Maybe this is the day the Yankees can liberate their bats from the back of the ice truck. Maybe this is the day when Curtis Granderson (or Raul Ibanez, who should replace him) or A-Rod (or Eric Chavez, who should replace [ital] him [ital]) or Nick Swisher (who may be on the verge of playing the final nine innings as a Yankee and has yet to deliver one meaningful hit in four years) finally seizes a moment and makes it their own.

CC Sabathia is on the mound; maybe he can channel Justin Verlander, who acted as aces are supposed to act last night in Oakland, closing out the A’s on four hits in Game 5.

“It’s time to go,” Sabathia said. “This is what you play for.”

They don’t grade you on degree of difficulty, after all. If the Yankees win today – “Survive and advance” Jimmy Valvano used to call it – they start all over again against the Tigers tomorrow, start at 0-0, and all the sins accrued in this series will be instantly forgiven. One game can solve a lot of hassles.

And it can also legitimize a magic carpet ride.

That’s what the Orioles have in front of them. They are the surviving Cinderella in this tournament with midnight beaning the A’s last night. Picked for last, picked to win 70 games, they won 93 and have added two more, and for a 12th time since Labor Day they stand eye-to-eye and nose-to-nose with the Yankees. It is worth remembering that they have never – not once – slipped ahead in the race.

They get one more shot. It will be the only one anyone remembers.

“It’s an honor to be in Game 5 with them,” Showalter said.

“The way we’ve played each other all year,” Chavez said, “it was almost inevitable that we were going to go five with them.”

Impossible to inevitable to inseparable, April to August to October. Eleven wins for the Yankees. Eleven for the Orioles. First one to 12 gets to play more baseball. Five o’clock lightning at Yankee Stadium. Yeah. Sabathia is right. It’s time to go.